On the recordJuly 15, 2015
This afternoon, this body is going to come together and in bipartisan fashion--I think that is normally a good thing, in bipartisan fashion--be able to applaud themselves for fixing the highway trust fund. Like the proverbial magician that takes the shiny object in one hand to distract you, they will, with sleight of hand, with the other hand borrow $8.1 billion when the American people aren't watching. I want to refer you to the chart on my left. You will see three lines. I want to talk about the bottom two first. The very bottom line is the revenue line. That is the amount of money we receive from excise taxes and gasoline taxes to pay for roads and bridges and infrastructure. The red line above it is the expenditures. That is the money that we are spending. The difference between the two is the deficit. That is the borrowed money. I will show you where it is. For decades--for decades--we have been adding red ink to the American people's debt. We have been borrowing billions of dollars annually each year to spend on our infrastructure rather than telling the American people the truth: that if we believe as Members of Congress and this body that roads and bridges and airports are important enough to buy, they are important enough to pay for. But we don't want to do that. We don't want to tell the American people we are going to raise taxes.…
